Nevada’s graduation rate improves

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005 | 11:02 a.m.

Nevada has made strong gains in improving its high school graduation rate in recent years but continues to lag behind much of the nation in education funding and student performance on basic skills tests, a new report released today showed.

Quality Counts 2005, released today by the publication Education Week, gave Nevada good marks on standards and accountability. Nevada is one of only five states that provides the public with data on campus safety, parental involvement and class size at individual schools, according to the report.

Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction, said he was pleased by the 8-point jump in the state's graduation rate, to 68 percent in 2002 from 60 percent in 2000, according to the Education Week report.

But Rheault said he is concerned by Nevada's low marks on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which was used by Education Week to gauge student achievement. On the 2003 round of the exam, 20 percent of Nevada's fourth graders tested as proficient or better in reading and 23 percent in mathematics. The national average in 2003 was 30 percent for reading and 31 percent for math.

"It's a matter of identifying the students who need help and working with them as early in the game as possible," Rheault said.

The state's criterion-reference test, used to measure "adequate yearly progress" as demanded by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, has been fine-tuned to more closely reflect the NAEP standards, Rheault said.

"It's probably not ever going to be a situation where we're comparing apples to apples but we're getting closer," Rheault said.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act calls for every public school student to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and mathematics by the 2013-14 academic year. That impending deadline has meant states are paying closer attention to not only how money is distributed to local districts but what programs, and ultimately what results, those dollars are producing, the report's authors concluded.

"America's system for financing education is at a crossroads," Virginia B. Edwards, editor of Quality Counts 2005 and Education Week, said in a written statement. "Increasingly, legislators want to know what their state education outlays are buying. They're asking what it would actually cost to enable all students to meet state standards, and how to raise the revenues called for by those calculations."

Thirty states have conducted studies of their education funding systems, but Nevada is not one of them, according the report. The report also notes that 31 states -- including Nevada -- are considering overhauls.

Nevada has not yet studied its education funding system, but the possible overhauls come in light of rapidly changing demographics in the state and new tax sources that could change the formula used to allocate money for the state's public schools, Jennifer Park, a senior research associate who worked on the study, said.

In a survey of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Nevada ranked 48th in overall education spending, with expenditures of $6,380 in the 2001-02 academic year. The national average in the same year was $7,734 per pupil.

While the 2003 Nevada Legislature raised the per-pupil funding level to $4,424 for the 2004-05 academic year, that has barely been enough to keep up with enrollment growth, said Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia.

"I remember when I first got here everyone was talking about how we ranked 40th in education funding -- we've dropped eight spots in four years," Garcia said. "People are under the illusion that we've put a whole lot more into public education in this state when the truth is we keep falling further and further behind."

Education researchers have been divided as to whether increased spending correlates to improved student achievement, said Mike Griffith, policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit organization that serves as a research clearinghouse for lawmakers and state officials.

"You can compare Mississippi and Connecticut and you'll find Connecticut spends much more and its students test much better," Griffith said. "But the real question is: Who are the students, and what are they bringing with them before the school spends a single dime?"

Studies show rather than school funding the single biggest indicator of a student's academic success is the educational attainment level of that student's parents and the level of involvement they have in that student's education, Griffith said.

Case in point: Utah's students scored between 10 and 12 percentage points higher than Nevada's students on the 2003 NAEP despite Utah's per-pupil spending being the lowest in the nation at $5,132.

But Utah, unlike Nevada, has a relatively stable population and relatively high level of educational attainment by its residents, Griffith said.

Clark County, along with the rest of the state, has focused considerable resources on improving literacy at the elementary school level. Studies indicate that students who are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade have only a 20 percent chance of ever catching up.

A pilot program being tried this year expands the elementary school literacy initiative to 51 middle and high schools. Read 180 is a two-hour class period that combines direct instruction with a computer software program that can been customized for remedial students.

"Every student in the room winds up with an individualized education plan," said Tammy Malich, principal of Findlay Middle School, which is piloting the Read 180 program. "It's a way for a teacher with 30 or 40 students to gear the lessons to each kid's personal needs."

While the program has only been in place a few months it's already popular with students and teachers, Malich said.

"We even have a special ed teacher who brings her kids in to use it," Malich said. "We're expecting to see solid results."